Alex Moore, president of Southpaw, said his company will invest roughly $500,000 to get the new space ready and hopes to move by April. Southpaw is currently in 38,000 square feet on North Irwin Street but has outgrown the facility.

The new building is about 160,000 square feet and Southpaw will take about a third of the space. One tenant already is in the remaining space and Moore expects to add another.

Southpaw has 42 employees and will likely be in hiring mode when it gets into bigger space. The move will also position it for long-term growth, which is good news for the overall Dayton region economy.

“We’ve got a lot of good things we’ve been working on over the last few years and it’s kinda nice to see things finally coming to a head,” Moore said. “We’re starting to reap some of the rewards for projects that have taken three, four, five years to develop.”

Southpaw’s equipment is typically used to help children with autism or any sensory processing disorder. The company, owned by Franklin Howard, has been in Dayton since the late 1970s.

The Dryden Road site was home to International Fineblanking and Plastech but has been mostly vacant for several years except for some short-term tenants. It was sold by Boston-based real estate investment firm Stag Capital Partners, which just sold the former Motoman site in West Carrollton to NuVasive.

Moore said Southpaw’s growth has been slow and steady since the recession, with 2015 its second best year ever. Some of the growth has been fueled by international demand since opening a UK office last year.

“And we’ve got some new markets we’ve been getting into over the years that have really been driving (the growth),” he said.

In 2011, while a vice president at Southpaw, we told you Moore opened a sensory gym designed for children in Washington Township. He said that business venture lasted about two years, but didn’t get enough traction to stay open.
Joe Cogliano
Senior Reporter
Dayton Business Journal